The
Bandit Queen of India: The Amazing True Story of India's First and Only
Notorious Bandit Queenby Phoolan Devi, Marie-Therese Cuny, Paul Rambali
Book Description: She was born in India to the lowest caste,
a group with few rights and even fewer prospects. Enduring cruel poverty,
Phoolan Devi survived the humiliation of an abusive marriage, the savage
killing of her bandit-lover and horrifying gang rape to claim retribution
for herself and all low-caste women of the Indian plains. In a three-year
campaign that rocked the government, she delivered justice to rape victims
and stole from the rich to give to the poor, before negotiating surrender
on her own terms. Throughout her years of imprisonment without trial, Phoolan
Devi remained a beacon of hope for the poor and the downtrodden. In 1996,
amidst both popular support and media controversy, she was elected to the
Parliament.
On July 25th, 2001, Phoolan Devi was shot dead in Delhi. The identity
of her killers is unknown, but it is thought that they may include relatives
of villagers killed by her gang nearly twenty years ago. For over a decade
millions have found the power and scope of Phoolan Devi's myth irresistible.
Now she finally tells the story of her life through her eyes and in her
own voice.
Hardcover from The Lyons Press

Castes
of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.by Nicholas B. Dirks
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic
and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India,
marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing
its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged
survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural
value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern
phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical... Amazon.com(Paperback)

City
of Djinns: A Year in Delhiby William Dalrymple, Olivia Fraser
Book Description: Sparkling with irrepressible wit, City of
Djinns peels back the layers of Delhi's centuries-old history, revealing
an extraordinary array of characters along the way-from eunuchs to descendants
of great Moguls. With refreshingly open-minded curiosity, William Dalrymple
explores the seven "dead" cities of Delhi as well as the eighth city-today's
Delhi. Underlying his quest is the legend of the djinns, fire-formed spirits
that are said to assure the city's Phoenix-like regeneration no matter
how many times it is destroyed. Entertaining, fascinating, and informative,
City of Djinns is an irresistible blend of research and adventure.
Paperback from Penguin USA (Paper)

Five Past Midnight in Bhopalby Dominique Lapierre, Javier Moro
On the night of December 3, 1984, a cyanide cloud drifted over the
streets of Bhopal...
Listed under Environment

The
Great Game : The Struggle for Empire in Central Asiaby Peter Hopkirk
In a phrase coined by Captain Arthur Connolly of the East India Company
before he was beheaded in Bokhara for spying in 1842, a "Great Game" was
played between Tsarist Russia and Victorian England for supremacy in Central
Asia. At stake was the security of India, key to the wealth of the British
Empire. When play began early in the 19th century, the frontiers of the
two imperial powers lay two thousand miles apart, across vast deserts and
almost impassable mountain ranges; by the end, only 20 miles separated
the two rivals. Peter Hopkirk, a former reporter for The Times of London
with wide experience of the region, tells an extraordinary story of ambition,
intrigue, and military adventure. His sensational narrative moves at breakneck
pace, yet even as he paints his colorful characters--tribal chieftains,
generals, spies, Queen Victoria herself--he skillfully provides a clear
overview of the geographical and diplomatic framework. The Great Game was
Russia's version of America's "Manifest Destiny" to dominate a continent,
and Hopkirk is careful to explain Russian viewpoints as fully as those
of the British. The story ends with the fall of Tsarist Russia in 1917,
but the demise of the Soviet Empire (hastened by a decade of bloody fighting
in Afghanistan) gives it new relevance, as world peace and stability are
again threatened by tensions in this volatile region of great mineral wealth
and strategic significance. --John Stevenson - Amazon.comPaperback: Kodansha InternationalISBN: 1568360223; Reprint edition (April )

India
: A Wounded Civilizationby V.S. NaipaulBook Description: In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi's
â€śEmergency,â€ť V. S. Naipaul returned to India,
the country his ancestors had left one hundred years earlier. Out of that
journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental
portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and
immured in a mythic vision of its past.

Drawing on novels, news reports, political memoirs, and his own encounters
with ordinary Indiansâ€“from a supercilious prince to an engineer
constructing housing for Bombay's homelessâ€“Naipaul captures
a vast, mysterious, and agonized continent inaccessible to foreigners and
barely visible to its own people. He sees both the burgeoning space program
and the 5,000 volunteers chanting mantras to purify a defiled temple; the
feudal village autocrat and the Naxalite revolutionaries who combined Maoist
rhetoric with ritual murder. Relentless in its vision, thrilling in the
keenness of its prose, India: A Wounded Civilization is a work of astonishing
insight and candor.
Paperback from Vintage

Indira:
The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhiby Katherine Frank
The veteran author of critically praised books about Emily Bronte and
Lucie Duff Gordon has written an exemplary popular biography of the powerful,
controversial prime minister who indelibly shaped the world's largest democracy.
Katherine Frank's solidly researched narrative is particularly good on
the early years of Indira Gandhi (1917-84), cogently delineating her complex
relationship with her father, nationalist hero Jawaharlal Nehru, which
was intimate when they were pouring out their feelings in letters, but
strained when they were actually together. We see an intelligent, strong-minded
woman coming of age in a turbulent time marked by her relatives' frequent
stays in prison as India struggled for freedom from Great Britain. After
independence, when Nehru became prime minister, Gandhi was politically
active but for many years resisted seeking power in her own right. Following
the deaths of her husband (Feroze Gandhi, no relation to the Mahatma) in
1960 and Nehru in 1964, she moved into the top spot, aided by the Congress
Party bosses' mistaken impression that she would be a figurehead they could
manipulate. On the contrary, Frank shows Prime Minister Gandhi prompted
by her deep fear of disorder toward increasingly authoritarian acts, most
notoriously the state of emergency declared in 1975, when she authorized
the arrest of many opposition leaders. Frank depicts Gandhi as having more
faith in her personal bond with the Indian people than in the messy workings
of democracy. But the religious and political divisions inflamed by her
policies came home to roost in 1984, when she was assassinated by her own
bodyguard, a Sikh enraged by the massacre of militant Sikhs in the Golden
Temple. This sympathetic but unsparing portrait makes it clear that Gandhi
was a flawed leader but evinces compassion for a woman striving with a
difficult personal and political legacy. --Wendy Smith - Amazon.comHardcover: 592 pagesHoughton Mifflin Co; ISBN: 039573097X; (January 7, )

Liberty
or Death - India's Journey to Independence and Divisionby Patrick French
Book Description: At midnight on August 14, 1947, Britain's
350-year-old Indian Empire was cracked into pieces. As the greatest mass
migration in history began, Muslims fled north and Hindus fled south, with
nearly a million massacred along the way. Britain's role as a world power
came to an end, and the course of Asia's future was irrevocably set. Liberty
or Death offers a bold reinterpretation of the last years of British rule
in India, including the disastrous mistakes and bizarre reasoning of many
of the politicians. Exploring the interplay between opposing characters,
including Churchill, Nehru, Mountbatten, and Gandhi, French offers a riveting
account of an epic debacle, the impact of which reverberates across South
Asia to this day. Patrick French is the author of the award-winning Younghusband.
Paperback from Trafalgar Square

Man-Eaters
of Kumaon (Oxford India Paperbacks)by Jim Corbett
Jim Corbett was every inch a hero, somthing like a "sahib" Davy Crockett:
expert in the ways of the jungle, fearless in the pursuit of man-eating
big cats, and above all a crack shot. Brought up on a hill-station in north-west
India, he killed his first leopard before he was nine and went on to achieve
a legendary reputation as a hunter. Amazon.comPaperback: Oxford Univ Pr (Trade); ISBN: 0195622553;
Reprint edition (July 1993)

A Peaceful Realm : The Rise And Fall of the Indus Civilizationby Jane R. McIntosh
Listed under Ancient India

Who
Are the Jews of India?by Nathan Katz
Of all the Diaspora communities, the Jews of India are among the least
known and most interesting. This readable study, full of vivid details
of everyday life, looks in depth at the religious life of the Jewish community
in Cochin, the Bene Israel from the remote Konkan coast near Bombay, and
the Baghdadi Jews, who migrated to Indian port cities and flourished under
the British Raj. Who Are the Jews of India? is the first integrated, comprehensive
work available on all three of India's Jewish communities. Amazon.com
Hardcover: 228 pagesUniversity of California Press; ISBN: 0520213238; (November
6, )

Kingship
in Indian Historyedited by Noboru Karashima
Book Description: This collection of 9 essays by Japanese scholars
is expected to contribute notably through its provision of empirical explorations
in conjunction with added stimulus for impelling inquiry into the recent
polemics concerning the Indian kingship. Focuses on kingship, theoretical
issues and case studies.
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Ltd.; 1 edition (May
1, )

Raj;
The Making And Unmaking Of British Indiaby Lawrence James
When Robert Clive, a "harum-scarum schoolboy" not yet out of his teens,
arrived in India in 1744, he found himself in the middle of chaos: English
merchants fought against French traders, Indian princes warred among themselves,
Portuguese and Dutch privateers plied the coasts, and throughout the country,
anarchy reigned. Clive flourished amid the confusion. He quickly distinguished
himself both in battle, showing bravery and unusual presence of mind, and
in trade. The combination was profitable for his employer, the East India
Company, and although Clive committed suicide in the wake of political
scandal in 1774, he set in motion what would become the British conquest
of India and the establishment of the Raj, a mixed form of government in
which the English ruled through a network of Indian politicians and civil
servants. Outwardly stable, the Raj was constantly under threat both by
Indian aspirations to self-rule and by other imperialists' intrigues, notably
on the part of Russia, Britain's chief competitor in what would come to
be called "the great game." Lawrence James, a longtime student of British
military history, offers a sweeping, and wholly absorbing, narrative account
of the Raj, taking it from Clive's time to the era of Mahatma Gandhi and
the flamboyant Viscount Mountbatten, the last British viceroy of India.
--Gregory
McNamee - Amazon.comHardcover: 544 pagesSt. Martin's Press; ISBN: 031219322X; 1 Us Ed edition
(December 1, )

Stones
in the Sand: The Architecture of Rajasthanby G. H. R. Tilloston (Editor), et al
Book Description This volume presents the characteristic traditional
architecture of Rajasthani towns and cities: the stone built forts, palaces
and havelis, temples, tanks, and kunds, from the 16th century onwards when
religion developed the distinctive style of domestic and civic architecture
for which it is well known. These articles, written by experts in diverse
fields, illustrate how these great and beautiful structures were first
conceived, constructed, and inhabited.
(Hardcover)